Last Wednesday, student radicals at Columbia stormed a campus building at Barnard, sending a security guard to the hospital in the process. A day later, a Columbia instructor canceled class so his students could attend an anti-Israel demonstration, a blatant violation of university policy.
That instructor, our Alana Goodman and Jessica Costescu report, who wasn’t named by the university, was Conor Cullen, who teaches philosophy at Columbia and who has been a vocal supporter of anti-Israel encampments on campus. He dismissed his contemporary civilization class after students asked for time off to “support the student protest movement” and attend an anti-Israel rally. Even Columbia’s administrators described the move as inappropriate and launched an investigation. Per Goodman and Costescu:
Cullen has long defended the anti-Israel protest movement that swept Columbia following Hamas’s mass attacks on Israeli civilians. He was among the untenured faculty that signed a letter expressing “solidarity” with the demonstrators and denouncing police and administrators’ efforts to dismantle the illegal pro-Hamas encampments at the university.
In another letter, Cullen defended the encampments and said the school had “disproportionately acted to silence one voice in particular—the voice of those protesting against the ongoing oppression and killing of Palestinians.” Cullen also signed a letter opposing a congressional investigation into campus anti-Semitism, claiming that lawmakers were “leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of ‘woke indoctrination.’”
“To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term,” the letter read. “Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity.”
The ordeal is the latest in a long line of anti-Semitism scandals at Columbia—scandals that spurred the Trump administration’s executive order to crack down on civil rights violations against Jews on elite college campuses. As part of that order, the administration’s multi-agency task force to combat anti-Semitism launched a review of more than $5 billion in federal funding commitments to Columbia. It could issue immediate stop orders impacting more than $51 million in active contracts.
Roger Lao has worked in Democratic politics for more than 20 years, serving on a number of presidential campaigns. They haven’t gone well. From John Kerry to Hillary Clinton, Liz Warren to Kamala Harris, Lao has swung big at the national level—and repeatedly missed.
Now, he’s the executive director of the DNC: Committee chairman Ken Martin, who has pledged to usher in a “new DNC,” tapped Lao for the role on Monday. Politico described the move as a “stay-the-course approach,” an apt assessment, given that the party is coming off of a loss—and Lao knows how to lose.
Martin nonetheless hailed Lao’s “depth and breadth of experience” in a statement announcing the appointment, which has our wholehearted support.
On Oct. 7, 2023, some UNRWA staffers who also happened to be members of Hamas participated in the terror group’s attack on Israel. More than a year later, in February, UNRWA media adviser Adnan Abu Hasna participated in an online briefing with a Hamas-linked organization in Lebanon—and said the embattled aid organization was, in fact, one of the attack’s “victims.”
“At the end of the day, we at UNRWA were one of the victims of what happened on October 7th,” Abu Hasna said in Arabic during the briefing, titled, “UNRWA After the Ban Law and the Arrival of Trump: Dangers and Coping Mechanisms.” Speaking alongside him were Ahmed Al-Hajj, a Hamas official based in Lebanon, and Saleh Abdel Ati, a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group.
“Abu Hasna’s participation in the briefing did not raise any red flags with UNRWA, even as it tries to rehabilitate its image in the wake of October 7,” our Adam Kredo reports. “In the months after the war in Gaza broke it, Israel revealed that scores of UNRWA employees are card-carrying Hamas foot soldiers. Hamas also used UNRWA-run facilities, including hospitals, to hide weapons, transport hostages, and plan further terror attacks on Israel.
“Abu Hasna, an UNRWA spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon, ‘is permitted to participate in public events to clarify the agency’s position. Participation in events does not endorse the organizers’ position, nor their political affiliation.’” Ok then.
READ MORE: UNRWA Official Calls Aid Agency a Casualty of Oct. 7 During Hamas-Affiliated Webinar
Away from the Beacon:
- Chuck Todd is finally ready to call out the Biden family’s misdeeds, saying the following on a podcast with Steve Schmidt: “I completely got so angry at Joe Biden, the man, when I read the transcript of the Hunter Biden trial. And when I realized that not one, not two, but three Biden children, and I count Beau’s widow, were all dealing with drug problems in 2018. And Joe Biden said, now’s a perfect time to run for president because who cares about our family?” Now you tell us!
- Tim Walz is considering a presidential run in 2028. No, we’re serious. “If I feel I can serve, I will,” he said Sunday. “And if nationally, people are like, ‘Dude we tried you, and look how that worked out,’ I’m good with that.” Sounds great.
- Hamasniks at the University of Michigan vandalized a rock meant to memorialize the Bibas family with messages of “Free Palestine.”
Original News Source – Washington Free Beacon
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